


admit impediments

by youwillmakeitoutofthisalive



Series: Not even every sonnet Shakespeare has ever written could grasp this crazy life (this good old love), but here's an attempt [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 16:18:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18626788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwillmakeitoutofthisalive/pseuds/youwillmakeitoutofthisalive
Summary: Bucky once read a poem that goes:‘Can I go now?’ I ask you as I lay on my deathbedAnd I hope you love me enoughto say yes.He says yes. So Steve goes. Except Bucky is the one who dies.





	admit impediments

**Author's Note:**

> Let me not to the marriage of true minds  
> Admit impediments. Love is not love  
> Which alters when it alteration finds,  
> Or bends with the remover to remove.  
> O no! it is an ever-fixed mark  
> That looks on tempests and is never shaken;  
> It is the star to every wand'ring bark,  
> Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.  
> Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks  
> Within his bending sickle's compass come;  
> Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,  
> But bears it out even to the edge of doom.  
> If this be error and upon me prov'd,  
> I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
> 
> therefore, i must conclude, indeed, that i have never writ. not no man has ever loved.

Truth is, Bucky knew it.

Throughout the history of his life, he had not known many things.

He had not known himself, for starters. He had looked in the mirror and had seen nothing but a ghost, an open window looking back and cold sharp wind coming through.

Even before that, there were things he didn’t know. He never knew how to properly dance the tango. He didn’t really know how to bake a cake, though Stevie had tried to teach him. He did not know the names of every single president that the United States had ever had, though he did know the name of each and every one of said fifty states (he had dreamt over sleepless nights that he’d visit them all one day, promised his best boy he’d take him to the grand canyon).

A lucky hundred years or so back, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 107th infantry, had not know how to hold a gun. Hadn’t know what the shrapnel felt like in his ear: a sting ringing across the sky, like lighting; the metal heavy and cool between his careful, precise hands that were carved to kill and had craved to stop; to be given a chance to make love, to make anything, other than war.

Unfortunately, there was never a time where he didn’t know what the war was. It’s been unfolding before his eyes ever since he can remember. Trapped night air blackening down his lungs when he was nothing but a twelve-year-old, lost in the streets of Brooklyn watching death creeping up on every corner.

There was even a time in which he had not known how Steve felt. He would look at him, not being able to figure that kid out, his eyes trying to burn through the walls he held up as thick shields around his heart, even as he wore it on his sleeve. Maybe it was the fact that, perceptive as he was, all Bucky could see when he looked at Steve was love. And he used to find it so hard to believe, that there was someone out there caring for him at all.  
(Eventually, he believed. Which only made this all the harder. He didn’t know it all. About this, he had been wrong, he knows that now.)

As with everything else, practice made perfect, and now. Now Bucky can look at him and simply know, as if the pieces of Steve’s puzzle are always the same, only rearranged different. As if he’d known him from the moment he was born. Just by observing, he can tell everything that’s going through that boy’s head (and sometimes, even, if he tries hard enough, through that boy’s heart).

Bucky had not known what the fuck was happening when he was brought back to life a second time, just to be thrown into battle. He had not even known who they were fighting. He just fought. He could tell who his enemies were because they were trying to hurt the only person he’s ever loved. So, he tore every life he could put his hands on, to shreds, not worried about the blood: he’s used to his skin being stained (scarlet from different slaughters forever marked upon his body). He’s used to the screaming of soldiers. He punches his way out of this one, like he always has, keeping at rest the raging fire that burns in his stomach, assuring himself that it will stop soon.

That’s a lie, but it doesn’t matter. There is always more battles to be fought. It’s men like Rogers who always bet their lives on their victory. And it’s men like Barnes who will die willingly on the battlefield fighting for them.  
Bucky had been an oblivious man for all he can tell, but not when it came to Steve Rogers.

When the fight was over (when the dust had blown off), when there was no one left to kill, when the strong, mysterious woman he had and the man made out of iron had already sacrificed themselves to save this planet, when every tear had been shed, when everyone had washed off the dirt, Bucky still felt heavy, right in the centre of his chest. Confused. Lonely. As usual.

Bucky knew.

He knew it when he looked at him, something in the static air between them, something in the harsh set of his shoulders. Some guilt revolving his gut, Bucky had hoped, out of leaving him behind. Or maybe it was just excitement.

He knew it when it was time for Steve to walk away. He had always known that much; that he was doomed to an existence of having him walk away from him. He knew it the moment he saw her for the first time, so sharp she could cut through any soldier’s façade with nothing but a glance. He knew it the moment he saw him looking at her and holding that look: only the great Captain America could be worthy of such woman. Only such a woman could be worthy of Steve Rogers, the whole entirety of his disastrous patched-up self, always ill and always angry, so damned courageous he could have stopped an army with the determination behind his fists.

She put the moon in the sky every night and he shone like the stars and they were perfect for each other. What did Bucky have to say to that? Under what authority could he have reclaimed him? What had he got on this fairy-tale story? Nothing but a broken mind and an endless inner compass pointing right at Steve. Nothing but love. Deafening, terrible, soul-clenching, arm-breaking, extenuating love.

And still, it was not enough.

He couldn’t do anything but stand there, loyal, knee-jerk, knowingly. Hand on his shoulder. Pat on his back. Whatever he needs. Let him be happy.

He knew it when Steve said “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back“, which is why he said “How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you”. It was awful. It was overwhelming. It was goodbye, maybe.  
A stone setting heavily in his heart as it had a thousand realities ago, when he was marching right into hell and away from Steve; the realisation that no matter how tight he hugged him he could never force him to stay.

He knew it when he hugged him, which is why he let go quickly.

He wanted to say “Please, don’t go”, only it came out as “I’ll miss you, buddy”. He figured it was all the same. It didn’t matter anyways, what came out of his lips, when out of his eyes, shots were being fired. Brooklyn rage. The French rainforest was falling in a pyre. The rooftops on Romania were burning. Siberia was in flames. And New York and Wakanda and everything in between was crumbling around them. And all he could do, for the life of him, was stare at this man, his eyes as set as the ocean after a storm, so shamelessly beautiful as he broke his heart, not sparing a beat.

In the end, it didn’t matter what Bucky said, it would mean “I love you” either way, and it wouldn’t have been enough to make Steve stay even if he had said exactly those words. He was never good at talking him out of bad ideas, the stubborn jerk. Not in back alleys. Not in freezing winter mornings. Not in Wakanda. Not now.

He knew that Steve was going away for good, to live a life he would not -could not- be a part of. 

When, indeed, he does not come back immediately, Bucky looks for him somewhere else. And when he finds him, he wants to run. He wants to hug him. He wants to say, “I love you”, only it comes out as a sigh: the longest he’s ever held. Steve’s frame is relaxed now, something about the way he holds himself together so softly, the mien of a man who has finally found peace. 

And it makes Bucky so god damned furious that Steve had dared finding such happiness without him. Maybe he’s selfish because of it, yet he cannot help it. He spent too long holding himself back. He wants to punch Steve. He wants to shake him. He wants to punch him, knock off the smile he knows is painted on his lips, even without seeing his face. 

He wants to kiss him so hard he’ll make him young again, weak-bodied and amazingly gorgeous, small between his arms once more, the same way Bucky is smaller now.

He wants him all to himself. It’s wrong, but it is what it is.  
Then again, of course he wants Steve all to himself: he has no one else. There’s no one in the world other than Steve. And in that moment, as they’re the only two people left standing, he thinks about asking him why. Why didn’t he suggest for Bucky to accompany him. Bucky, who had gone above hell, far in between, through it, into it and back again. Bucky, who had his life stripped away from him. Who was abandoned, bare and lost in the prominent snow of his own mind. Whose eyes had seen this world fall into chaos; whose hands had pulled the trigger, forged the future. He who had been torn wide open, like a wound, and scratched over.  
Steve was salt inside his stitches, now. 

It had driven him insane: the thought of being apart from him. And then, it had made him so god damned sad: the fact that Steve could leave and live, without sparing him a thought.

He wants to screaming, to be loud and rough, and he wants to hurt him. Then he breathes and closes his eyes. Sam gives a step forward, and Bucky gives a step back.

He thinks about asking him if he’ll be able to sleep at night, knowing he created an alternative timeline in which Bucky is being enslaved by Hydra all over again. He thinks about asking him if he even thought about him. If the thought of saving his past-self crossed his mind.  
Whatever, Bucky tells himself, I don’t want to be saved.

In the end, he asks nothing. He stays there, silent, watching life beam out of the man he loved. But that life was someone else’s.

Alone, now, in the dead of night, whatever time later, he whispers for himself only, and he asks the Universe (he asks Steve, really, but he isn’t there to hear him): why did you save me if you were going to leave me alone in here?  
He wonders how could he ever had thought he’d be interested in any kind of life without him.  
And the answer is easy: he didn’t think about it at all. He just did what he thought was right.  
That’s alright, Bucky figures. Not everyone deserves a happy ending.

**Author's Note:**

> shaving his beard off made steve dumb
> 
> the poem in thee summary is by Nikka Ursula. appreciate her
> 
> :)


End file.
